Monday, June 4, 2012

Jesus' Death Stumbled Many

Jesus' death did stumble many. They were revolted by his impalement and stopped believing in him. As the Apostle Paul said at 1 Corinthians 1:23,  this "became a cause for stumbling."  But why?


The reason,  is that in the eyes of most Jews, according to historian, Ben Witherington III,  such as an impalement was "the most shameful way to died in the world. He says that people in the Middle East believed that the nature of your death portrayed who you were as a person  -- and being impaled was usually reserved for criminals guilty of murder or sedition. 


So in the eyes of many Jesus must have been really a scoundrel -- a person guilty of blasphemy against God and sedition against the state as the Jewish Sanhedrin alleged.


This  seems strange since  centuries earlier Hebrew prophets predicted the vile treatment that the Messiah would receive at the hands of his enemies, but still it did happen.


In view of this it does not seem reasonable to believe, as some Bible critics do, that the early Gospel writers, Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John,  made up the accounts of Jesus' trial, death, and resurrection.


If they were trying to create myths about Jesus in order to attract others to their beliefs this is not the way they would have gone about it in view of the way most Jews viewed death by impalement.

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